Are you f***ing kidding me?
Heard this sound bite on the radio today and then found it over at Think Progress (quite easily I might add).
Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it’s slavery. We become slaves to government.
OMG. Really? What kind of mental contortionist act does it take to see ancient Egypt as a welfare state? That's Texas governor Rick Perry, now another clown in the circus that is the Republican nomination process. Well, soon to be anyway. You can see the video clip over at Think Progress.
How do you even address such phenomenal, unrepentant stupidity? And you know people will vote for him just because he's a "good Christian." That is if being a good Christian is bankrupting your state in the name of God. "Take what you can. Give nothing back," was certainly one of Christ's best lines. Wait maybe I'm getting him confused with someone else. No wait, being a good Christian means invoking God to defend your behavior at least three times a day. Or was it an hour? I mean, really. "By their fruits ye shall know them" is so passé.
You know, when I was a kid "taking the name of the Lord in vain" pretty much meant swearing. It's been some time now that I don't think God gives a rats ass if his name is a swear word. I mean, really? He's that insecure? If I were God, I'd be a lot more upset by whackadoodles like Perry who use my name to con people by telling them he's in my good graces, when really I think he's a first class asshat. But that's just me, I guess. I obviously lack insight into the mind of God on the matter.
I feel dirty.
I needed to get some files from a client today and the easiest way for him was to give me his GoToMyPC login info so I could copy the folder off his desktop. He happened to be on his computer at the time listening to Michael Savage. It's the only time in my life I have ever listened to Savage other than sound bites on news shows. I know enough about Savage to know I would find his political views generally despicable, and yet—on this particular occasion—I found myself thinking, "I think he's right."
He was making the same case I've made before, namely: The Republicans threw the 2008 presidential election because they knew their profligate spending would come home to roost during an economy on life support and they didn't want to have to catch that particular hot potato. He also posited that Republican "puppet masters" made sure it was McCain and not Romney because they were afraid Romney could win by accident. He basically said they knew McCain would screw it up because of terminal foot–in–mouth disease and of all the options available as a running mate, Palin was chosen to "cinch the deal."
I think he's right. I just hope their current strategy of fiddling while Rome burns backfires on them. They're counting on the economy staying sluggish and unemployment high to win in 2012. [Insert your higher power here] help us if it works. You can be damn sure it will be right back to "trickle down economics" if they do. And it will be a sad commentary on the collective intelligence of the American people.
Amen, Sister.
I like the idea of The Rapture. I believe it’s the best idea God has ever had. I was personally disappointed on May 21 when it became apparent that someone had made a slight calculation error. Ah fetch! I thought to myself when all of the Utah legislators (state and federal) were still here.
What I’m saying is can I vote for The Rapture to happen? Is there an online petition I can sign in support of the Chosen Saints being taken up to Heaven?
So much stupidity. So little time.
The Commute
Easily the most stressful part of my day. Twice daily I am angered and frustrated by the number of people who are driving with their head up their ass, or driving with their phone glued to their ear, which amounts to the same thing.
From a behaviorist perspective, people need immediate feedback that this behavior is unacceptable. George Carlin once proposed everyone have a gun that shoots those suction cup darts. Whenever someone drives ignorantly, you shoot them with a dart. Police would know that someone driving around with multiple darts on their car needs to be pulled over and ticketed for driving while stupid.
My fantasy is the ability to teleport them to the top of a large building or put them in a big tree. This would accomplish two things. First, it would immediately remove them from the milieu and allow the rest of us to get home without further hassle. Two: It would horribly inconvenience them and introduce immediate, severe financial penalties for not paying attention while on the road. The other part of the fantasy is they wouldn't be able to just teleport themselves down. They'd have to hire a crane to retrieve their vehicle. OK, three: I would feel a whole lot better.
You want to see the photos? Really?
People demanding that photos of the deceased bin Laden be released are up to one of two things.
Either—They are either questioning the integrity of the Obama administration. I must admit that was my first thought, mostly because after 10 years it seemed such an outrageous claim. It only took about two seconds of reflection to realize that would a pretty untennable lie to perpetrate. All it would take would be one video of Osama doing the jihadist version of "neener neener," and there wouldn't be enough Comet on the planet to get the egg off of Obama's face.
Or—It's some sort of obsession with the macabre; some way of personally gloating over the corpse of an enemy.
Either way, Obama is absolutely correct to not release the photos. He's absolutely correct that this is a somber time for reflection and not a time for gloating or celebration. I realize that's contrary to Christian principles of turning the other...oh, wait. It's time for his critics to STFU and get back to the economic mess we're in.
Captain Whackadoodle strikes again.
Yesterday on the radio Orrin Hatch was talking about some statistic that says around 50% of American's paid no taxes or even got a refund last year. I can only assume with a refund on the table, we're talking about whether or not you had to write a check on April 15th. Hatch was blithering on about more people needing to pull their weight. Was he talking about the wealthy? Of course not. Was he talking about the poor? Oh, no. Even Hatch is smart enough to know that talk of raising taxes on the poor is political suicide. He was talking about the middle class.
Let's just set aside for a moment any kind of demographic sanity check on the income levels of these supposed slackers and take a moment to give Hatch a lesson on how taxes work. Obviouly Hatch has never had any experience actually doing his own taxes and/or lives in a fantasy world that has no bearing on reality.
As a citizen of the United States, you have two options: either you are self-employed or you are W-2. People who are self-employed are required to make quarterly tax payments. The rest of us working sods have taxes automatically withdrawn from every paycheck. So no matter what, we are paying taxes. If we get a refund, it's a return on an overpayment of taxes. No one ever gets a check from the government if they haven't paid taxes in the first place. And no one gets interest on the money the government borrowed from us for that year either.
There's no charity here you idiot.
And the list goes on…
So Utah's proposed budget cuts would force 13 liquor stores to be closed and 150 jobs to be lost. Liquor stores in Utah are owned an operated by the state, in case you were wondering. You still think Republican's really give a damn about fiscal responsibility or about anyone in the working class? Set aside all the hand wringing by Utah's alcohol consumers. I thought the Republican mantra was "jobs, jobs, jobs." They certainly say the word in every sound bite possible, even when the topic at hand has nothing to do with the unemployed. "We need more kids graduating from college so we can create more jobs." Huh? Have they been paying attention to the Middle East at all? Who started these revolutions? College graduates who can't find work. Idiots. But I digress. So how do you explain a move that will eliminate jobs? Answer: Republican's don't care about low wage, part-time jobs or the people who need them to survive.
I'm trying to understand how an operation that is generating $18 million in profits needs to have its budget cut. Sounds like it's more than paying for itself. Kinda have to wonder where that money is going. I guess that's why legislatures make poor boards of directors: it never really is about the bottom line. It's about ideology. Mormons don't want to drink alcohol. They just want to control (and sell) it.
You want a cost saving measure? Cut the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control loose. Let it run as a private company and eliminate it from the budget altogether.
God, people. Wake up.
Quote of the Day
There’s no reason that the government should prevent homosexuals from entering civil marriages because some religions object to the concept, any more than the government should ban atheism because some religions object to it.
Lisa Pampuch
I don't know who Lisa Pampuch is. There are dozens of her on the Net. I couldn't find the original source of the quote either, but it's everywhere. I'm thinking it has something to do with how eminently reasonable it is. Of course, as this Lisa Pampuch points out, reason has little to do with the religious experience.
When asked what he would do if Camping* is wrong again, Rick LaCasse, who witnessed Camping’s 1994 failure, said: “I can’t even think like that. Everything is too positive right now. There’s too little time to think like that.”
UPDATE:This Lisa Pampuch, cited above, is the Lisa Pampuch who has thoughtfully provided links to the original article in the comments. Thanks, Lisa.
*Camping is currently predicting the rapture will occur on May 21, 2011. Obviously, it wasn't 1994.
It would be funny, but. . .
. . .I think he's serious.
Hatch asserted that the health bills, which he believes represent a "step-by-step approach to socialized medicine," will lead to Americans' dependence on Democrats for their health and other issues. "And if they get there, of course, you're going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody's going to say, 'All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party,' " Hatch said. . . .(TheHill.com)
It boggles the mind that he can say that with a straight face. If I had time, I'll bet I could find at least a dozen similar quotes regarding the New Deal. Well, 70 years later we're still not a socialist state and we still have a two-party system. True to conservative form, if facts aren't on your side, try hysteria.
Gonna have to remember that one
From Joe McNalley's Blog:
Visited the Apple store on 5th, and shot a pretty typical up looking view of the spiral staircase there. Liked the graphics of it, until of course an Apple employee stepped up and told me I couldn’t shoot up at the stairs cause somebody might be wearing a skirt. Now in Manhattan the array of people who could be potentially wearing a skirt is widely varied, so I could understand their concern. But really–all you see are the bottoms of shoes. Do I look that desperate? The guy who complained to me musta had the nuns.
"Musta had the nuns." I like that. Oh, and don't you think someone had already thought of that which is why the glass is frosted? Sounds to me like someone can't think of any other reason to be looking up . . .
From “The Onion”
If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting Of Gays, He Would Have Given Me The Warmth And Compassion To Do So
. . . It's a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?
Compassion, tolerance, understanding, basic decency, the ability to put myself in another person's position: God could have endowed me with any of those traits and yet—here is the crucial part—He didn't. Why? Because the Creator of the Universe wants me to demonize homosexuals in an effort to strip them of their fundamental human rights.
. . . So unless our almighty Lord and Savior decides to change His mind about my ability to empathize on even the most basic level—which I find highly unlikely—then everyone is just going to have to accept the fact that I'm going to keep on hating homosexuals. And I know that He will fill me with the strength to remain mindless and hurtful in the face of adversity.
You can find the rest here.
HT: MoHoHawaii
Concise if somewhat inaccessible
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.
No idea where this comes from. Found it on a boy blog I follow. I suspect it's not original to the author of the blog. I see sentences constructed like this and know they are inaccessible to a large segment of the population. It's not that they couldn't understand it, but a first parsing doesn't bear fruit so they just check out. In the past I've found it necessary to translate statements in Ivory Tower Speak to be more accessible to my clients.
On the other hand, I think of right-wing buffoons like Beck and Limbaugh and have guilty fantasies of an aneurysm cause by intellectual overload to their atrophied and addlepated brains.